15 October 2014

Today we feature Chapter 9,
the chapter called “Barbarism and Civilisation”, of Engels’ book “The Origin of the
Family, Private Property and The State”. The Chapter is linked below as
an MS-Word download. You can safely pass over the first three paragraphs of
this chapter. They refer to previous chapters. The remainder of Chapter 9 is
self-contained.

“The Origin of the Family,
Private Property and The State” is a classic of the first rank, both within the
field of Marxism, and more widely.

Lenin relied on it, and
referred to it often for the illumination that it gives to the revolutionary
question of The State, and to the necessity of the withering away of the State.

But this work of Engels’ is
also foundational in Archaeology and Paleoanthropology (i.e. the study of the
pre-history of human society), just as Engels’ “The
Condition of the Working Class in England” was foundational to the study
of the formation of cities (Urbanism, also called Urban Studies or Town
Planning). Engels, who never formally went to a university, is nevertheless more
than once counted among the towering historic founders of scholarly disciplines.

Marx had already worked on
source material for this project, including on Henry Morgan’s 1877 book called
“Ancient Society”. Engels found Marx’s working papers after
Marx’s death in 1883, and immediately set to work to prepare a book from them
for publication.

The particular contribution
of “The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State” is that it shows
the common, interdependent origin of private property and the State, plus the
fall of the women into the oppressive condition which they subsequently
continued to suffer, plus also the institutions of money, writing and law.

The simultaneous revolutionary
break in all of these things marks the end of pre-history and the beginning of
history, which as Marx and Engels had noted in the Communist Manifesto,
was from that point onwards “a history of class struggles”.

The transition from
prehistoric communism into class society took place a long time ago in some
parts of the world, and much more recently in other parts. In Egypt and in Iraq
(Mesopotamia) it happened more than five thousand years ago. In other parts of
the world the transition happened almost within living memory.

The simultaneous nature of
the triple catastrophe (property, state and downfall of women) may mean that
the remedy for all three will likewise have to be simultaneous, or at least co-ordinated.

The urgent abolition or
“withering away” of the State is for that reason a woman’s issue, and the
socialist project is a woman’s project, because they are all part of the same complex
of oppressions. Communism is a necessity for women.

The reversal of the downfall
of the women can only be achieved by the abolition of property and the State.
Likewise, the abolition of property and the State cannot be achieved without
the conscious restoration of women to their proper place in human society. All
three goals have to be achieved together.

The three goals are actually
the same goal, and the name of it is communism.